Need a deeper look into your virtual environment so you can charge departments for resource use? Want to keep closer track of communications among virtual machines? Ready for a product that extends the life of the batteries operating your critical wireless networks? Here are 10 best-of-their-kind products for increasingly sophisticated IT environments.

Slideshow: Get a visual view of these 10 advanced IT products.
Podcast: How to optimize a data center through automation.

1. Altor Networks' Virtual Network Security Analyzer

Availability: Now
Pricing: Starts at $500 per physical server; supports an unlimited number of virtual machines. A required Altor Center management system supporting unlimited VNSA agents costs $1,500.
What it does: The VNSA appliance lets IT departments oversee virtual switches to make sure that communications among virtual machines are compliant and secure. It relies on agents for monitoring traffic and a centralized management tool for detecting, analyzing and alleviating problems across the virtual enterprise. For instance, VNSA can alert IT groups to top talkers, configuration errors, inappropriate protocols, network anomalies and compliance issues.
Why it's important: "Not only can the technology look at [virtual] traffic, it can act on it. It can drop packets, manipulate traffic and quarantine machines," says Phil Hochmuth, senior analyst at Yankee Group. (Read more.)
In the field: Nielsen Mobile, a division of The Nielsen Company, uses VNSA for real-time and historical monitoring and analysis of its virtual switch traffic.

Media giant Hearst uses the VNSA appliance to look at virtual machines at rest and in motion among physical machines. The company's production environment is made up of hundreds of virtual machines.

Alloy products supplier Winsert uses VNSA to carry out network management and security best practices in its virtual environment. The company also relies on VNSA to monitor and troubleshoot performance problems among virtualized applications and servers.